Friday, 8 January 2016

Media mistakes

Reading the CNN coverage of the truck bombing today that killed 65, CNN fails to even once mention that Gaddafi was unseated by NATO intervention instead writing simply, "Demonstrations against Gadhafi in 2011, as part of the broader populist Arab Spring movement, led to a civil war that climaxed with Gadhafi's October 2011 killing by rebel forces in his hometown of Sirte." Anyone who is familiar with the situation in Libya in 2011 knows that rebels would not have lasted a month without NATO intervention, however for some reason CNN doesn't feel that this information is relevant to their readers. Following suit, NBC's article on the truck bombing mentions only that "Libya slid into chaos following the 2011 toppling and killing of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi."

Similarly, the BBCfails to mention any NATO involvement in Libya: "Libya has been hit by instability since his overthrow in 2011, and there is concern Islamic State (IS) militants are gaining a foothold there." Instead of mentioning that the NATO plans of replacing Gaddafi with a neo-liberal Western state are failing catastrophically, the BBC instead writes in a passive tone, as if to suggest some natural disaster is befalling Libya that we in the West have no control over.

When it came time to bomb the media positively gushed with enthusiasm and dutifully played its part as a propaganda outlet. A report of mass rape by the Libyan army was widely circulated uncritically. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Doctors Without Borders would later prove that the reports were unfounded. Similarly videos were released purporting to show the bodies of Gaddafi soldiers killed for trying defect. Later, video footage was found of the men as prisoners of the rebels before they were killed, meaning that the rebels had killed prisoners and then blamed the Gaddafi regime.

And while we are on the subject of media mistakes in Libya, it went below the radar of most everyone that a recent Al-Jazeera documentary has finally proven once and for all that Gaddafi was not responsible for the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270. A high level Iranian defector has confirmed what was always suspected, that the Iranian regime, working through the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, carried out the bombing as a retaliation for the downing of Pan Am flight 103 by the US navy.

[RB: Al-Jazeera’s three Lockerbie documentaries can be viewed here, here and here. A fourth is in course of production.]

5 comments:

Is media blindness the cause? Or deliberate amnesia? Chomsky is the great analyst on this matter.

Meanwhile the truth is contained in a nugget of a secret email by Hilary Clinton's unofficial intelligence adviser, Sidney Blumenthal. This reveals that the so-called "rebel" Libyan groups were in fact armed and trained by Egyptian, French and British special forces operating from the Egyptian and Libyan borders. Masses of guns and heavier weapons flowed across the borders. And behind the scenes, CIA and British listening posts monitored every conversation by Gaddafi and his sons and generals.

It was regime change par execellence, and in keeping with Bush junior's original plan (revealed by former 3 star general Wesley Clark) to "bring down seven governments in five years". Here's where to find it: http://original.antiwar.com/Brad_Hoff/2016/01/05/new-hillary-emails-reveal-propaganda-executions-coveting-libyan-oil-and-gold/

The bias and agenda-running in the BBC is becoming more blatant every year. Maybe it was ever thus, but we were too insulated from the wider world to see it. There's an interesting book called "Newspeak for the 21st Century" from the people who run Media Lens which has some disturbing detail about the BBC's complicity in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Newspapers, including the Guardian, don't come out well either.

The speculation that Lockerbie was a Iranian revenge attack for the Airbus is no more credible than the claim Lockerbie was a Libyan revenge attack for the US/UK bombing of Tripoli.

Both rely on a plausibility motive that wont face serious scrutiny by the neo-con media.

But if motive is proof then all victims of US aggression are guilty, but then again it could be a false flag that the US will attribute to whoever they want to bomb next.

Or maybe if the US can lie about the Who they can lie about the What, hence their refusal to allow a public inquiry into the crash in favour of a bogus criminal investigation.

Except the success of PE1370 meant against all expectation Lockerbie remained a live legal issue in Scotland, hence their attempt to close the Case by inflicting regime change in Libya, despite Gaddafi cooperating with the US.

'Maybe it was ever thus,' I'm afraid it was and continues to be. Moreover, its role as an establishment propaganda machine is not restricted to economies with the truth and distortions of historical and current fact in the reporting on foreign affairs (which invariably comes across as a variety of right wing imperialism), it is all too common in the presentation of home/national news as well. The examples are legion and I could probably cite quite a sufficiency from a single half hour news broadcast. Not only that but there is no longer any such thing as reporting, pretty much every single item masquerading as a report is contaminared by comment. Effectively, we pay a licence fee to be duped. Moreover, there is nowhere to turn to since the independent sector is just as bad. It is not a simple matter of government control, establishment control is deeper and far more insidious. The UK is particlarly good at this, it's had plenty of practice at maintaining the population in a mushroom culture. Try getting the BBC to broadcast anything favourable about the counter arguments to the Zeist position, no matter how rock solid, it's like trying to get blood out of a stone.

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